The Trespassers (9 page)

Hurry, hurry, let men of good will meet, decide, ratify. Let the doors of decent nations be thrown wide, let the padlocks and chains of quota numbers and immigration laws be burned through with the acetylene flame of compassion. But hurry, hurry.

There was need for hurry in that springtime of 1938. Most of you migrating ones had yet to learn the stony face of the immigration laws in each possible host country. The United States, for instance? The huge, sprawling land of promise settled by earlier migrants from persecution or poverty?

Yes, the United States will welcome you.

Will welcome if you please, sir, 27,370 from Germany and Austria; that is the quota for a year. Will welcome 2874 Czechs, 6524 Poles, 869 Hungarians, 100 from the Free City of Danzig, 252 from Spain…these are the quotas for any fiscal year, even this year.

It was as if the great, heaving breakers of the ocean were to burst and crash against a three-inch channel through mighty rock.

Those who were denied turned elsewhere, changed plans, sought every consulate of every land. And these were only the first, the prompt ones. Behind them were the uncounted others who would soon follow in this seeking of permission to live, if not on this soil, then on that, or that other.

But France, England, Portugal, Belgium—all countries had their immigration laws, had their decreed quota of welcome to the ones in flight. Everywhere the tale was told in the same sad syllables—the quota is full, the quota is full.

T
HE LAST WINDS OF
March were blowing over Vienna. Against them Dr. Vederle raised the collar of his overcoat as he walked through the streets. They were chill winds, blowing from the North, blowing over a sick Germany to stricken Vienna heavy-laden with the terrible pollens of hatred and human pain.

As he walked he considered the letter in his pocket. It had come at last, that very morning, mailed in New York on the twentieth, traveling by five-day boat, and then delayed, unaccountably, another five days coming across civilized western Europe from Southampton to Vienna. Was there a secret censorship of mails?

He took the letter out and examined it again. There were no signs of its having been opened. Ah, well, if they knew, the Gestapo, that he was actively preparing to leave, they knew.

He would not succumb to a thousand fears and apprehensions. The question he was considering now was a realistic question, brought into focus by the letter. Could they wait in Vienna for the affidavits? Or was it wiser, safer, to leave Austria at once, and do their waiting elsewhere?

For the letter, cordial as it was, showed him clearly that there would be delay. It was disappointing that Ann Willis had been forced to turn the affidavits over to a stranger, who could not have the personal compulsion to help that Mrs. Willis herself had. Then, to the list of documents that would have to be prepared—there was plenty of room for delays there—by a bank, a lawyer, by this Vera M. Stamford herself, who was apparently a busy woman with a thousand other things to do.

Christa had read the letter with him, and the same uneasy disappointment assailed her.

“The affidavits won’t be here for a month, I’m sure. Is there nothing to do but just wait?”

“I must think,” he had answered. Was there a month’s leeway in this swiftly changing, darkening Vienna?

A half-formed plan teased his mind.

Now, walking swiftly, he must decide, and either reject it as needless and thus overdramatic or make it workable and act upon it.

He turned a corner and came upon some street disturbance; automatically he stood still at the edge of a crowd, to see what caused it. Over the shoulders of the jeering people ringed about in a large circle, he looked down upon the sidewalk.

Six men and two women were on the ground, on hands and knees. They were probably Jews. They wielded brushes, rags, crumpled masses of newspaper. Kicking and prodding them on with their task were two dozen storm troopers. The task was to wipe or wash out the chalked name of
SCHUSCHNIGG,
printed during the night on the stone walk. Schuschnigg had been arrested a few days ago, was being tortured, according to rumor, by a blaring radio at his ear so that for days and nights he had had no sleep.

The look in the eyes of the crouching, cleaning Jews made Vederle turn away, nauseated and murderous. The mourning, the unbelief in those eyes…

Each day now, some new event brought that nausea, that helpless impulse to stop, to halt, to kill these precise-gestured storm troopers.

Yesterday they had arrested Professor Carl Meiers, one of Europe’s greatest physicists. They had smashed the laboratories and imprisoned Dr. Anton Rachler, one of the world’s leading crystal-lographers. They had seized Professor Johann Biedenkass, the anthropologist, and shot him to death while he was “trying to escape custody.” Not one of these three was engaged in politics or in anything but the grave, fine life of science; by the demented Nazi standard each was an “enemy of the Reich.”

How could a crystallographer, immersed in the precisely beautiful study of crystals, be an enemy of the Reich? “Today the German university professor must ask himself one question…”

Recently he had read a newspaper story that was offered as a highly humorous bit. It told of some hot argument among students at the University of Moscow or Odessa. The fight was whether the Mendelian Law had to be discarded—was it not “contrary to Marxian dialectic and thus counterrevolutionary”? He had not thought it even mildly funny. The world was sick, with this insane sickness of “The State.” Germany, Soviet Russia, now Austria.

A month’s leeway? He wrenched his mind back to his half-formed plan. He could count on Margaretta van Morduyn, young as she was. He glanced at his watch. She would be reaching the office now. He walked more briskly.

A uniformed messenger was waiting in the anteroom. He delivered a letter; it was in Christa’s handwriting, marked “Urgent” and “Private.” Paul? Ilse? Christa herself? No, about such matters she would have telephoned. He signed for it, took it into his office, ripped it open.

They are ransacking Freud’s house now—confiscating his and Anna’s papers, documents, etc. K. just came by and told me; it is still going on. Don’t know yet whether they will arrest him and family. Be careful.

Freud. Two years ago his eightieth birthday had been an international event. During the celebration at the Wiener Konzerthaus, attended by scientists from a dozen countries, Thomas Mann had read a birthday oration written in tribute and homage. To Freud, in his summer residence, letters and telegrams had poured in from the whole international world of science. Now, here in his own Vienna, Freud…

For a moment Franz Vederle cradled his face in tense hands. In his mind, an old and calm voice counseled him, “Hold fast to the truth.” Then composed again, he opened the door to the waiting room.

“Good morning, Miss van Morduyn, come in now, please.”

She came in, a pretty girl, the only child of a powerful banking family in Holland. She started for the analytic couch, but a gesture from him stopped her. He motioned her to a chair facing him.

“Here,
Herr Doktor
?”

“Yes, please. We will not have your hour this morning. I am going to ask you instead to do something of great importance for me and my family.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“I have told you,” his voice was calm, “as I did all my patients, that it might become necessary to interrupt the analysis. Naturally, I hoped that it would not happen.”

“Oh, Dr. Vederle, I thought—I hoped—”

“I know. It is difficult and unfortunate for every patient if the analyst seems to desert him. You know that in Germany and now here, many patients have had to break the thread and continue elsewhere. You, for instance. I think Le Manion in Paris—”

“Then you
are
leaving? Soon? Oh, I—”

She gulped. He waited for a moment, his eyes sympathetic over her floundering look. Every patient was the same. But the adjustment would be made in the face of the necessity.

“We have no visas as yet. There will be delay about it. I have decided that we should leave without them. So it would be wise to arrange our departure to look—not like a permanent exit. It is there you can help.”

“Oh, I’ll do anything—anything you tell me.”

“Good. Would you come with me now, to the Dutch Consul? I shall explain on our way there.”

She showed astonishment, but only nodded and gathered her coat, gloves, and purse in readiness. Vederle telephoned his house.

“Christl,” he said, his voice casual. “Thanks for your note. I think that the children need a holiday, perhaps in the mountains. Could you pack at once for a vacation?”

“What—why are you—”

“We will talk it out in an hour or so. But would you start the packing at once? Perhaps there will be accommodations on tonight’s train to Basel. Or tomorrow’s.”

“Bas—ah, I see. Franz, I—” She hesitated. He waited. They had wondered whether or not telephones were being tapped.

Then she went on again, in another voice, practical and matter-of-fact.

“I shall start the packing at once., I—what about your things? How shall I know just which—”

“No, just your things and the children’s. Spring vacations in Switzerland are not for doctors. I may be able to join you on Palm Sunday for a few days.”

“Franz, but you are not—”

“Nothing is basically changed, Christl. Be patient about hearing more.”

His voice was decisive. Whatever he was planning was necessary.

The doctor and his young patient reached the Dutch Consulate. Margaretta had reacted to his plan as he had predicted she would. She was eager, almost gay, over it. After a brief delay, they were shown in to the office of the Consul General. An aide introduced them, and started to leave. A gesture from Vederle stopped him and he waited, uncertain and embarrassed.

“I would so appreciate some help,” Vederle began quietly. He turned to the aide. “Would you—could I trouble you to escort Miss Van Morduyn into another room for a moment—and”—he dropped his voice into a meaningful whisper—“and stay at her side?”

The clerk looked to his chief for permission.

The Consul General gazed first at Vederle, then at the blonde and lovely girl. He nodded to the clerk, who went to the door and held it open for her. She started for it, then wheeled, ran to Vederle, clung to him, her body tense, her fingers clutching at his coat. When she spoke her voice was shrill, wavering.

“No, no, they will take me to the lake if I leave you. No, no—”

“Hush, Margaretta,” he said. “You are safe here. I will not let them take you to the lake. Wait just a moment with this friendly young man. I will call for you in a moment.”

He led her to the door, stood with her for a moment. Docile, she went out.

It was enough. A big, lavish scene might have aroused suspicion, not this brief, anguished interchange. The Consul General leaned forward toward him.

“My patient is—ah—mentally disturbed. The past week or two has exaggerated her condition so much, the—ah—general excitement of soldiers, the bombers overhead, the street scenes—that I think it safest to return her to her parents in Holland. Would you give me the required certification to accompany her over the border?”

“She is not fit to travel alone?”

Vederle shook his head.

“She becomes quite—disturbed. I do not even wish to delegate a nurse to go with her. I would like to fly on some plane tomorrow, if two seats can be had and if you will give a temporary visa and a money permit for several days’ expenses there.”

There was a pause. It hung between them for a long moment. “Her father is the banker, van Morduyn.” Vederle offered the last remark as though it had no conceivable interest or bearing on the situation.

The name was finality itself. After that there was nothing but technicalities; in thirty minutes Vederle and Margaretta left the Consulate, their papers complete, two seats on the Antwerp plane already reserved for them by telephone.

On the street, they faced each other briefly.

“Was I all right?” Margaretta said anxiously. She saw his smile and knew there was gratitude in it.

“Do as well at the frontier,” he said, “and I shall believe you have an immense future on the stage.” He shook her hand warmly. “I shall come for you in a cab at three-thirty tomorrow.”

She nodded and they parted. His spirits had risen unaccountably in the last hour. There were relief and strength in action, in the end of waiting about for transatlantic boats, for the mails. He hailed a cab and made for the railway station. He bought three tickets for the next evening, on the Venice-Milan train. There was no difficulty. The Italian border was still open, and less suspect than the Swiss.

He was not yet done. The statement from the children’s doctor might prove useful; one could not predict everything, but one could prepare for it. Entering the offices, Franz was struck by the empty waiting room, usually so crowded with mothers and children and nurses, waiting their appointments with the renowned Dr. Hermann Schneirmann. Today not even the nurse was there. He was admitted by Schneirmann himself. “He looks older and overtired, too,” Franz thought.

“Hello, Hermann. Would you give me a statement that Paul and Ilse are over the whooping cough, convalescent but no longer infectious?” he began. “I am sending them away with Christa, for a holiday.”

The two men looked at each other in silence and complete understanding. Schneirmann lit a cigarette and sat at his desk, drawing writing paper and pen toward him. Vederle saw then that the hand holding the pen trembled.

Schneirmann wrote and signed the statement, folded it precisely, handed it over. He looked at Franz; his face held no expression whatever.

“My mother killed herself during the night,” he said, then. “She is, was, a Jewess.”

“God, Hermann, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have troubled you now—”

“She did it, I believe, not so much out of personal fear, but because she believed it would be easier for me if she—if she removed the physical proof that I am half Jewish. The futility of it hurts me—as much as—”